


O Brother, Where Art Thou?

by romanticalgirl



Category: Bandom, The Academy Is...
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 20:56:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1200009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>In the wake of the Midtown reunion show announcement</p>
    </blockquote>





	O Brother, Where Art Thou?

**Author's Note:**

> In the wake of the Midtown reunion show announcement

He knew he was going solo. 

He didn’t know he was going it alone.

He probably should have known. He’s smart about things like that. He knows there are some ties that you cut that are severed forever. He didn’t think these were. Wishful thinking, maybe. Faces that are vague, somebody that he used to know a long time ago in a different universe.

Except they’re as sharp in his mind now as they ever were. The stupid things they did, the profound things they said. They’re like bright stars in his universe, constellations of feelings that he uses to guide his way. 

There’s a little voice inside him that says it’s him. His fault. It probably is. He’s good at polarizing, at shutting doors in people’s faces without realizing he’s doing it. He’s good at people, but not friendships. He’s good at walls and not doorways or windows. 

He still watches, so there must be windows, but maybe they’re too high to break into, or maybe no one’s trying to scale the bricks to find them. Mike is gone. He gave up on his sledgehammer and knocking down walls long before anyone else. In a way the end was anticlimactic. Something they’d been working at destroying for years. It’s a shitty metaphor, contradictory. Of course, that’s a perfect metaphor for their friendship. Relationship. Whatever it was. 

Mike got everyone in the divorce. Probably because he was the good guy. Probably because he was the wronged party. All the people he thought were friends are just acquaintances, proximity the mother of necessity. Nothing hurts more than being on the outside of the inner circle you thought you were part of. No. Nothing hurts worse than finding out you’re on the outside, not knowing until everyone else sees that it’s obvious.

He could brush off the record. The tour and the album and the song and the media blitz. He could, if he hadn’t been in Chicago when it happened, if he hadn’t been home and been there. If he hadn’t been at the Knights of Columbus halls. He could brush off the tweets and promotions. Maybe it’s political. He left the label under what weren’t the best of circumstances. But that’s professional, not personal. 

Everything else is personal.

He lands in LAX to the news, and he thinks something breaks inside him. Maybe it’s the sound of flames, of the last bridge burning. Or maybe its the whistle of rope as it unwinds and finally snaps apart. Or maybe it’s his heart. He’s back to the masses for all of them now, his last hope floating away like an old concert poster. 

At least in the beginning, there was a chance he’d be there among them. Now it’s like he was never there. He thinks about responding, but he’s not sure what words he’d use against the silence that says everything.


End file.
